


You Know That I Do

by YourPalYourBuddy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Coping Mechanisms, Focuses on Natasha, Gen, I don't think, I rewatched the first Avengers and that one line Clint asks about, It's happier than it starts, Mild Language, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not Beta Read, Nothing's really a spoiler, POV Second Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Probs post everything tbh, because of course she does, or a brighter ending, ptsd warning, whether Nat knows what it's like to be unmade stuck with me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 09:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9227957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YourPalYourBuddy/pseuds/YourPalYourBuddy
Summary: Do you know what it's like to be unmade?______It started for you before you knew it was happening, didn’t it? That’s what you say to yourself in the mirror, when you can stand to, when you wake up from Clint’s arms breathless and having to remind yourself of things that should be simple.It started for you and you didn’t have a choice. Your identity was never really yours to begin with.But it happened. It did.You haven’t been yourself, not truly; you’re all a mask. Nancy Rushman. Natasha Romanoff. Black Widow. Natalia Romanova, but who is she, after all of them? She is meant to be you, the real you; can she be, if you’ve separated yourself into pieces and sewn bits of yourself into the other names? Can Natalia ever be you, if she’s missing everything you are?_________________A look into Natasha Romanoff's character.





	

_ Do you know what it's like to be unmade? _

______

 

It started for you before you knew it was happening, didn’t it? That’s what you say to yourself in the mirror, when you can stand to, when you wake up from Clint’s arms breathless and having to remind yourself of things that should be simple.

It started for you and you didn’t have a choice. Your identity was never really yours to begin with.

But it happened. It did.

You haven’t been yourself, not truly; you’re all a mask. Nancy Rushman. Natasha Romanoff. Black Widow. Natalia Romanova, but who is she, after all of them? She is meant to be you, the real you; can she be, if you’ve separated yourself into pieces and sewn bits of yourself into the other names? Can Natalia ever be you, if she’s missing everything you are?

Not the truth to everyone at all times. Not even to yourself, if you’re being honest.

If you’re being honest. When are you ever honest?

You hadn’t been yourself before they took you and started the process. It started for you and you were still picturing those ballet shoes in Ded Moroz’s hands. It started for you and there was still sochivo on the ceiling, and there’s some irony in that, isn’t there? Those moments of irony are ones you laugh at in the daylight.

Cruel, how they used ballet against you. 

It was ballet in the beginning. A quiet room with ten other girls. Posture, breathing training, learning to be elegant as easily as breathing. As easily as pulling a trigger. Footwork, moving silently through space, yet still being the biggest presence in the room.

They erased that part later, though. The presence. Unless you needed it, unless you were caught already, that presence was never meant to be seen.

Maybe in that sense it was the truest part of you. There but not there. Unmade.

What was it, you think, the moment you realized? You were not old. They took away your ballet shoes and gave you a knife. You learned to walk with it as a piece of yourself, another lie becoming truer the more you said it. It became one of the truest parts of you.

How simple it was, for them to teach you to hunt instead of plié. How simple, how clean, making the shift from ballet to spy, from spy to assassin, and in the end what is assassinating but another form of dance?

Natalia died the day your children did. That was the last piece of you, in all honesty. You aren’t one for children now, weren’t then, but. There’s something about the chance of them. You rationalize; it’s really the science of it, really, the idea of looking at yourself in a child, the pure parts of you. 

Children aren’t always innocent. You know this. And yet. 

Natalia died the day you did, a biological death. There would be no child with your hair or eyes or that birthmark on your thigh. Your DNA, unmade. Thrown out and forgotten.

So. The Black Widow. But even she was not you, was she, could she have ever been, when there were others? 

You were good at it. Are still. Clint in your bed is not the blank slate you could have been. 

Sometimes you want that to be true, that you kiss him and you’re Natalia. Sometimes, when you wake up and the sun’s drowsy on his face, you let yourself imagine he’s someone you could belong to as yourself. But you always leave on these paused mornings. There is nothing here that can erase what you’ve become, after all. And you don’t want your salvation to come from anyone but yourself.

On those nights you wake up and Clint stirs beside you in his sleep you go to your bathroom. You hold onto the sink and stare at your body in the mirror and force yourself to believe that you’re in there, in your body, that those eyes are yours and so is that nose and the mark Clint left under your right breast is real too. That you’re present, that’s what you want and dread to believe at the end of all of this. That you’re real, that all they’ve unmade and substituted for is real too.

You don’t want to list yourself in your body count by fading away from yourself. It doesn’t always make sense. But now, as then, bruises make you feel like you exist. 

You told Clint this once and that’s why there’s a winding trail from his mouth crossing from your shoulder to your hip. You poke your way through it, and it hurts, and the hurt solidifies your existence for these few moments. 

On those nights you wake up and Clint mumbles beside you in his sleep you go to your bathroom. You talk yourself back to yourself the way they used to talk planes down in muddy sightless weather and sometimes the bruises don’t work, and neither does the talking, and you need something else, and those nights you cut your hair. It’s a choice, something to control, and you do it. 

It’s jagged and uneven because it’s hard to cut the hair on the back of your head. But your hair curls a little, those days it wants to, so it’s covered up some days. Clint finds you, or you let him find you, before the mirror those mornings after. You hand him the scissors wordlessly and he wordlessly evens out what you’ve done to yourself and these little things, after you remember yourself, are the only things you’ll let him do to save you. Bruises from kissing and even haircuts. The rest you do on your own.

Fury has someone you can talk to if you want. Sometimes you do. Mostly you take care of it yourself, nonverbally except for Clint’s name. Or, completely nonverbally, petting a stray at the compound and remembering your own cat. Mostly you find Steve and run until you feel it, which takes a while, and even then he’s not winded at all. Mostly you find Steve and wonder how it would’ve been different if you’d been the hopeful experiment and not the emotionless construction. Because you were created, and so was he, but yours was less careful. Or careful, but less caring, is what you mean.

Mostly you find Steve and Clint and Sam and Bucky and sit and watch movies about silly things. You’re fond of animated ones, so you always argue for them, and when Bucky passes you the popcorn the bullet wound he gave you that he doesn’t remember giving you doesn’t hurt anymore. 

It’s all a mask, or it feels like it. You know how to play double agent and how to stop but you don’t know how to stop playing someone who knows how to compartmentalize herself. When you’re not a cover, who are you?

It’s hard to trust someone when you don’t know who they are, Steve once told you. He was talking about you, how he didn’t know who you really were and questioned your motives. And you're damned if you didn’t know that better than anyone, how hard it is to trust you.

On those nights you wake up and Clint’s holding you you stay and find true things. You were born Natalia. You became Natasha. You became a Black Widow. You’ve killed so many people. You were good at it. A part of you likes being good at it, probably a large part of you. These are the truths you dwell on when you’re in a non-bullshitting mood. The hard things are the ones you think about, when you’re feeling strongest. When you’ve let yourself be comforted by Clint’s breath warm on your shoulder. You aren’t going to let him save you, not the way they do in the movies Steve likes because they remind him of himself and Bucky. You’ll save yourself.

On those nights you wake up and Clint’s holding you and it’s not quite bad but it’s not quite good, you stay and find true things. The room is a dark green. Green looks good with your hair. Clint kissed you eleven times on your torso. He likes when you say his name. You like when he makes you moan and curl your toes, because it’s a true way to be unmade. You like that truth. He has a scar on his face that you gave him when you first met. You like how he smells. These things are hard, too, but they’re hard in a different way. It's hard convincing yourself you’re allowed to be happy after everything you’ve done.

You’re still not sure you are. But it’s easier now, now that you’re not KGB or SHIELD, now that you’re training to live instead of being twisted into an ill-fitting mold to survive, it’s easier to convince yourself that you are.

And you know what it’s like. You know what it’s like, standing over someone with a missing bullet in your gun and a wetly warm hole in their heart. You know what it’s like, ballerina, going from practicing lifts to using your thighs to choke off someone’s air. You know what it’s like, going from brushing on blush for the first time to seducing information from an enemy agent. You know what it’s like to be unmade. It is the first thing you’re sure of.

But you know what it’s like, to make yourself over, don’t you? You fight for yourself even while you sleep and your dreams come easier now. You know what it’s like to wake up while Clint’s holding you and remember who you are these days, and holding onto that helps. You know what it’s like to make yourself over every morning, to stitch yourself back into your skin and to rest unsteadily on your bones.

It started for you before you knew it was happening, didn’t it? You were unmade before you learned first position, before you finally laced the slippers they gave you for practice for the first time. Your identity was never really yours to begin with.

But you know how to start over too. You start over every morning you wake up. And you will, you’ll do it every morning the sun drips over your face, every morning Clint kisses you sleepily awake. You have, and you will, and you’re not everything to everyone all at once, but you’ll become everything to yourself one day. A spider sitting on a string trying to find herself is a powerful thing.

When was it, the moment you decided to try?

It might’ve been when you left Russia, after Clint found you and spared you. After he decided to bring you in and you decided not to kill him. That was as good a time for a fresh start as anything.

It might’ve been when Fury gave you your first mission, the first one that didn’t involve a body not getting up. The first one in a while that meant you stole not breath but information, not life but codes and intel. It might’ve been then. You’d forgotten what it was like to use the skills not directly related to killing a Mark.

It might’ve been when Maria Hill started training with you. She’d noticed the bruises on your arms and offered to train with you, not teaching you but always trying to surprise you. And you learned new moves and taught her new moves and reminded yourself that there were decent people in the world.

Or maybe, it was in Budapest with Clint, when your mission left you both lightheaded and giddy and you kissed and slept together for the first time. Maybe it was then, because it was the first time you’d let yourself be touched by someone outside of a mission and you were safe and warm.

Maybe it was the first time you cut your hair. The first time you felt drawn to alter yourself due to your past. Maybe it was then, when you took control of your appearance for yourself and not to match a cover.

Or maybe it was all of these things. Maybe it’s that, you didn’t decide just once, but all of these times, and every little moment between them. 

Maybe it’s just when you wake up and Clint’s holding you and you think,  _ I’m coming. I’m coming, look out. I’m here and I’m real and I’m coming. _ And maybe it’s when you think that and you get up and you talk yourself back to yourself and, stitched back into yourself, your masks lying on the floor, you go meet the world smiling with knives in your sleeves.

It started for you before you knew it was happening, back then. But it happened, and you know it, and you’ve accepted it. And now you’re looking to see what, exactly, you are now that you’re closer to yourself, now that you know you’ve never gotten a chance to be you.

A matter of circumstance. That’s what you are.

Now you’re going to make your own.

______

 

_ Do you know what it's like to be unmade? _

_ You know that I do. _

**Author's Note:**

> I recently rewatched the first Avengers movie and wanted to look closer at what it meant for her to be unmade. This hasn't been read for errors and things (I mean it has, but by myself, and in the last few minutes) (not that I don't like it but it was started today and finished like ten minutes ago) (so it's probably in need of a revision but I'll do that later if I decide to) *anyway* so sorry if some of it doesn't make sense; I think there's a tone shift earlyish, but I'm not sure how to fix it at the moment. (If you ask I'll say it's character development) (but you can fight me on this) ((I mean that earnestly)


End file.
